Practitioner Perspectives with Moving Brands
that for the brand. We have this is how the corporation or the business wants to perform and execute itself, and we’ve set ourselves this vision– how can our brand help us to live or create that? And that might be the singular piece that we will work with our client for. So I suppose, for us, its very different
DARREN BOWLES [continued]: that we would try to have this offer that are more like blocks. You might want all of those blocks that join together, or you might want an isolated one. Where we’re successful, and where we really add most value is when we can make the connection between these parts. It’s not an isolated piece, it’s where we can see how that piece has an effect or has repercussions in other areas.
DARREN BOWLES [continued]: And we can start to bring that journey to life for them. [WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRANDING AND MARKETING?] For me, I think they serve a symbiotic relationship. They’re not two different things, and they shouldn’t be perceived as necessarily contrasting parts or pieces that need to be treated differently.
DARREN BOWLES [continued]: I think, as I said, I think a brand is a promise that you make. And I think that marketing is delivering on that promise, it needs to convey what it’s trying to achieve. As opposed to announcing to the world, this is the promise, this is what we represent. I think sometimes where, perhaps, brand and marketing come in competition to one another is where, perhaps, you market something that the brand can’t deliver upon,
DARREN BOWLES [continued]: or what the service can’t deliver upon. And I think that’s where, perhaps, people have real problems, or they have an objection to a brand. Because it is perceived, or it’s trying to make you perceive it in a different way, so I think that relationship– there’s what we do, and what we say we can do– need to work together. I think, otherwise, it feels more like spin,
DARREN BOWLES [continued]: we’re all used to political spin. I think in terms of marketing and brand, we can see when something has being spun as a line to a person and not necessarily delivered upon. So they need to work together, and I think they need to come from that singular source where there’s an objective of the business that sets the scope of what it’s trying to say to the world. That’s the point where these things join,
DARREN BOWLES [continued]: and they’re both trying to achieve that aim.
HANNA LAIKKO: I would say that brand or branding, in general, is bigger than marketing. It’s bigger than design, as well. If we discuss about brand as the combination of the story, the identity, the promise, the differentiation, and the set of expectations the customer can have, but then also the product and the delivery
HANNA LAIKKO [continued]: of those expectations. Because if you don’t match those two things, over time, you will lose. [WORKING WITH GLOBAL BRANDS E.G. SONY AND NOKIA] We work with a lot of the best global brands. There’s quite a few technology brands in there so, of course, you need to take the context where these brands operate
HANNA LAIKKO [continued]: into an account. So looking at their competitors, looking at their customers and consumers– how they behave, what they actually need from them. I suppose one of the key things– what’s part of our belief is that it’s an interplay between the aspirational ambition that the brand has, and the real truths that
HANNA LAIKKO [continued]: exist in the company. So, obviously, it needs to look into the future of where the brand or the company wants to be, what is the vision, what do the consumers or customers want– but also, what’s true in the company. So in that sense, it doesn’t really matter that we work with some of the competing companies in the world as well, because inherently, all
HANNA LAIKKO [continued]: of the creative out within all of the design that we deliver is based on
